


i carry your heart with me

by spacenarwhal



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Dysphoria, Domestic, F/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-War, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-23 13:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19702699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: Steve grew up an only child, but Peggy had had Michael and John and George, all of them driving her mad each and every day from sun up to sun down. Michael and John are both gone now, and George is half a world away, having stayed on in Australia after the fighting was done.Peggy rarely imagined herself as a mother, not even before the war, let alone a mother to an entire brood of Rogers, but watching James grow up in a house with only her and Steve as playmates had made her think.[Or: The Roger-Carter household awaits the arrival of their second child]





	i carry your heart with me

**Author's Note:**

> This story is technically a direct sequel to the bud of the bud and the root of the root where Peggy gives birth to James Rogers in NYC. The family has since relocated to California and, with Howard Stark, commenced their work developing SHIELD.

James smells like grass and sun and the brine-seaweed scent of open water. His skin is gritty with sand, his brown hair drying into a reckless haystack, the fine tips starting to go the same color as his father’s from hours out beneath the summer sun.

“Mummy.” He says, still as brown-eyed as the day he was born though he’s begun to go as thin as a needle since leaving infancy behind. He wiggles onto her lap as best he can, perched nearly on the edge of her knees, her treasure hunter returned from an afternoon out on the beach ladened with bounty he’s eager to share. “Look what we found.”

Peggy smiles at him, her lovely explorer, leaning forward in order to better look at his findings. “Something marvelous to add to our collection, I hope.” She is referring to the eclectic collection of items on display on the windowsill of her office. A shard of sea glass. A cracked seashell. An interestingly shaped rock. A feather.

James nods, tipping his small yellow pail that he takes along on his seaside excursions so that Peggy can get a better look. He’s careful not to get sand all over Peggy’s skirt or desk, mindful of all the paperwork Peggy keeps there. He’s always been a meticulous boy, for as far back as Peggy can remember, mindful of where he puts his things.

On pensive days she worries their life has led to it, that James is only mirroring back what he sees in Steve and Peggy both. Locked drawers and crisp files and long days apart. Steve’s face in grainy black-and-white, framed in a gold-leaf frame in Howard Stark’s darkly varnished hallways, and unrecognizable compared to the sand-and-salt filmed man who trails after him on the sandy shorefront and crouches along tide pools while James examines starfish and minnows.

On better days, Steve likes to claim James gets it all from her, “You’ve got that eye for details, Agent Carter.” He jokes, humble as ever, as though he weren’t a man capable of studying the big picture and weighing all the possibilities.

Not that it needs to come down to genetics at all. Peggy likes to think they’re simply excelling at teaching James proper manners.

James rummages in his bucket and plucks something from within. He glances upward to make sure he still has her attention, his grin brightening his face as he extends his hand.

There’s a small white triangle held aloft in his fingers, serrated along the edges, chipped at the top. “Dad says it’s a shark tooth.” He announces proudly. Peggy grins, leans closer—as far as the huge mass of her stomach will allow her anyway, which isn’t much—and James beams, pleased that Peggy is suitably impressed.

“Daddy says they have rows and rows of teeth. So it won’t miss this one.”

“Do you plan on putting that under your pillow?” Peggy asks teasingly, “See if the tooth-fairy can be tricked?”

James giggles, examines the shark’s tooth closely. “It’s too pointy, Mummy. She’d know.” James sticks his tongue in the gap where his incisor fell out not long ago then stops, catching himself before Peggy needs to remind him not to do it. “Besides, that would be a lie.” He tacks on at the end, glancing at her through his lashes as though to double check he’s gotten it right. Peggy nods approvingly.

“And where’s your father? Did you feed him to the fishes?”

James snorts, amused by the jest, then, with near painstaking care, removes himself from her lap, making his way towards the windowsill to position the shark tooth between a green-blue glass bead and a buffalo nickel.

Peggy takes the opportunity to place a hand on the edge of her desk and leverages herself up out of her chair. James, a tiny gentleman in the making, is quick to her side to offer her his hand.

Peggy wishes she’d been able to accompany them for this afternoon’s beach trip but the reality is she would have just slowed them down. She’s been so tired of late, everything made difficult not just by her considerably larger size but by how little energy she seems to have. By and large, pregnancy wasn’t the stuff of dreams the last time around, but Peggy doesn’t think carrying James ever felt quite like this. The other women at the office were so quick to assure Peggy that every pregnancy is different, speaking to her with an openness women seem to feel when sharing information singular to the feminine, but Peggy can’t shrug off the fretful prickle nestled behind her navel.

Like James this child took them both by surprise. Neither of them had been entirely sure Steve could father a child, as the effects of Doctor Erkstien’s serum weren’t entirely known, never mind the chamber they’d enclosed Steve in or his exposure to the tesseract while he’d been manning the Valkyrie. But then, out of the blue like a bolt of lightning, James had come into their lives, a small incomprehensible miracle.

Steve had grown up an only child, but Peggy had had Michael and John and George, all of them driving her mad each and every day from sun up to sun down. Michael and John were both gone now, and George was half a world away, having stayed on in Australia after the fighting was done. She might not imagined herself as a mother for a long while, let alone a mother to an entire brood of Rogers, but watching James grow up in a house with only her and Steve as playmates had made her think. Still, it had seemed foolish to want something like another child when the first by reason already felt like divine intervention.

And yet, here she is now, well into her thirties and heavily expecting. Peggy knows for a fact she’s not the only one caught off guard by the development. 

Peggy is older than most of the women the doctors see for childbirth. A late in life pregnancy the original physician said when he’d pronounced she was expecting, the corner of his mouth hooked with condescension.

(Steve frowned, hands white-knuckled where they were clenched on his lap. “She’ll be alright though, won’t she?” he asked, “Her and the baby?” Peggy thought back to neighbors of years gone by, gone to hospital and never returned. It’s a terror of expecting that all women know to dread.)

Tired as she is after an afternoon of little more than shuffling papers, Peggy can still smile for her son, listen to his tales with every ounce of attention, until eventually Steve finds them, sitting in the window seat in front of James’ collection of sea-day treasures. Steve carries a tray of sandwiches with him, and what Peggy knows beyond the shadow of a doubt will be a pot of herbal tea for them to share, a glass of milk for James. He smiles when he sees them, soft and warm as the sunlight coming in to Peggy’s back. He sets their lunch down and leans in to kiss Peggy’s cheek. Peggy’s heart lurches with affection. Or heartburn. Neither is out of place. 

“Missed you out there.” Steve says during one of the lapses in James’ retelling while their son is carefully tearing the crusts off his sandwich. He dips those in his milk and eats them first before starting in on the sandwich proper. Peggy doesn’t know where in the world he picked up the habit.

Peggy smiles softly, blows gently on her cup of peppermint tea. It’s crisp and cooling on her tongue, leaves her feeling a little bit more alert. Steve, always thinking.

“It won’t be much longer now.” She says, setting her cup on the top of her belly, leaving it there on its own and raising her hands in the air as though it were a magic trick. It’s enough to make Steve grin, loosens some of the tension he seems to wear across his forehead like a band these days. 

“Did Daddy really punch a shark during the war?” James asks abruptly, and Steve goes pink the way he does whenever anyone mentions ‘those stories’—the brightly colored nickel and dime pages that still sell like crazy at newsstands. Howard still kicks himself for not thinking of it first—flushes redder when Peggy laughs.

James has been asking more and more of these types of questions, fact checking the stories he hears on the schoolyard. James keeps a box of Captain America and the Howling Commandos comics under his bed, all gifts from Howard. He likes to look at the pictures, the silly faces and overblown grimaces of brute strength and dominance in each punch and blow. Ka-pow. Boom. The war feels a world removed studying those pages, laughably garish and simple. 

“Oh, yes.” Peggy says, dabbing at a spot of tea that’s splashed onto her belly. “Oh, yes, most definitely. It was the punch that won the war.”

-

Steve scrubs sand out of James’ hair, the tub water sudsy and warm enough for a thin layer of fog to coat the bathroom mirror. James lines toy boats up along the lip of the tub, smallest to largest and then deploys them one by one as Steve maneuvers a soapy wash cloth over his back, down his arms, over his boney legs and the muddy soles of his feet.

Every now and then Steve glances over his shoulder towards the bedroom where Peggy lies on her side of the bed, back turned towards the door, just to double check she’s alright. He knows Peggy doesn’t need him coddling her but the knowledge doesn’t lessen the urge to take care of her, to keep her comfortable and safe, to do everything in his power to let her know he’s right here, whatever she may need.

“I’m going to lead an expedition all the way to Antarctica.” James tells Steve decisively, pushing one of his toy ships through the water, plowing through small piles of soap bubbles, setting off small waves across the surface of the bathwater.

“Yeah,” Steve ventures, rubbing behind James’ ear. “What are you going to find?”

The whole room smells faintly of flowers, given off by the thick bar of soap Steve works into a lather between his hands. It’s nothing like the flat yellow disks issued in army care packages, never big enough to leave anyone feeling truly clean. James ducks the largest boat under the foamy surface of the water so that a large air bubble rises up in its wake, gurgles and burps as it breaks the surface. It makes James giggle.

“The unknown.” James says, dead-serious, like one of the broadcasters reading the evening show, and Steve grins in response.

“Can you tip your head back for me Jimmy?” Steve says, fingertips gentle under James soft chin, guiding his head back so he can rinse his hair clean. He put his hand on James’ forehead, partially to keep him from lowering his head, partially to keep soapy water out of his eyes.

Ma used to do the same for him on bath days. It wasn’t like this, nothing like this. Their tub used to be in the kitchen, dragged in and out of the corner when necessary. Steve remembers it, hammered tin like they used to make before the war. They’d fill it one pot of water at a time, filled from the spigot out in the hall. Ma and Dad used to marvel at the convenience, must have told Steve a hundred times about what it was like in some of the other buildings, about having to lug pails full of water up from a water pump in the yard. Steve could appreciate that, even if the water was never quite comfortably warm, gone cool waiting for there to be enough to really bathe in. 

Now it’s as easy as turning a knob and watching the tub fill while James selects his fleet of boats. Steve marvels at it sometimes. It seems as unbelievable as any of those tall tales in the books Howard sneaks James.

“Have you ever been to Antarctica, Dad?” James asks, eyes studying the ceiling, his hair gone dark as it flattens against the curve of his skull, water splashing back down into the tub.

Steve follows the trail of water with his palm, cradles the back of James’ head for a moment, the light bulk of it. “Almost, one time. Didn’t quite make it though.”

James’ eyes flicker his way, study Steve’s face. He’s got his mother’s eyes, the same eagle-eyed focus that sees the ins and outs of every situation. Steve runs his fingers through James’ hair to make sure there’s no shampoo leftover and then nudges James to sit upright again.

“Alright, bud. You pass inspection. You’re good to go.” James starts reining his boats in, setting them one by one back on the lip of the tub to dry.

“You should come with my crew for our expedition, Dad.” James says graciously, looking up at Steve with his mother’s brown eyes, “But not the baby. He won’t have his sea legs yet, will he?”

Steve huffs a laugh, easing himself to his feet so he can reach for a towel to dry James off with. “How ‘bout we wait for a while so that Mom and the new baby can come. Then it’ll be a family expedition into the unknown.”

James scrunches up his face, obviously unconvinced. “The baby just makes mummy tired.” He says sourly, and Steve halts, towel in hand, when James says, “Eddie says new babies ruin everything.” He frowns hard, smooth brow furrowing deeply, “He says parents love them better.”

Steve kneels, runs his hand over James hair so that it stands in spikes and cowlicks, rubs at the damp nape of James neck. “Listen to me, kid, your mom and I know just how lucky we got getting a kid like you. You think just anybody can get that lucky?” Steve squeezes James’ shoulder, “No way, pal. We’re talking miraculous odds here, DiMaggio hitting streak kind of odds.” James smiles at the comparison and Steve smiles back, moving to wrap the towel around James small body and hoist him out of the tub. At six, James is still somewhere between happy to be picked up and carried and adamant that he’s almost completely grown-up and doesn’t want to be babied.

“We’re gonna love the new baby just like we love you. And you’ve got to know Jimmy, that’s a whole lot of love.” Steve says, still carrying James in his arms, dripping bath water as they move down the hall towards James’ room. “You’re always gonna be our guy, and we’re going to need you more than ever after the baby’s born. Mom and I are going to count on you to keep an eye on them, teach them all about the important things in life.”

“Like what?” James asks, nestling his head under Steve’s chin. Bath water drips onto Steve’s neck and dampens the shoulder of his shirt but he doesn’t mind. 

“Oh, all kinds of things.” Steve says, setting James down on his bed, still wrapped in his oversized towel. “How to play ball, how to build a pillow fort...”

Steve never had a brother but he’d had Bucky, feels that familiar gut-punch grief that comes whenever he thinks about him, his hand slipping out of Steve’s, his voice disappearing as he fell.

“Daddy?” James asks, breaking Steve’s train of thought before the dark clouds gather any thicker.

“Yeah, pal.”

“Maybe we can take the baby to Antarctica.”

Steve chuckles, rising to his feet to collect a change of clothes for James. “Your ma will be happy to hear it.”

-

Peggy sleeps and sleeps, wakes after sunset to Steve’s hand gentle on her shoulder, head ducked close to her face. “Hey Peg, you want some dinner?” She isn’t especially hungry, overly warm under the thin blanket Steve must have thrown over her while she slept, eyes gritty and head heavy like it’s been filled with sand.

She dreamt she was in England, before the war, sitting with her grandfather in his vegetable garden. She can still smell the tobacco on his jacket.

“Steve?” She mumbles, shifting, trying to get away from the groggy discomfort condensed under her skin.

“Peggy you alright?” Steve asks, voice closer, hand tightening slightly at her shoulder to help her up.

She blinks, the darkness of the room letting up only slightly. The baby kicks her, lands a solid kick somewhere near her right kidney and the pain clears some of the fog from her head.

“James—” She asks haltingly, remembering her son, fearing that she might ever forget him.

“Getting ready for bed. He wants to come say goodnight—but—you okay?”

Peggy shakes her head, falling over her face in a tangled mess. She tries to push it away but her hand feels clumsy, swiping at her face. Steve’s hand joins hers, broad and warm, sweeps her hair behind her ear. His thumb brushes over her cheek gently. Peggy’s eyes sting.

She feels lost, like someone’s detonated a flash bomb and knocked all her senses askew.

Steve says her name again, thumb pressing a little more firmly against her skin. Peggy takes a steadying breath, tries to force her head clearer. “I’m fine, Steve. Just, think I might have overslept. Give me a moment. I’ll go over to James’ room, think stretching my legs would do me good.”

Steve reaches for the bedside lamp, fills the room with a rosy golden light. Peggy blinks as though the lamp were a floodlight, as though the sight of Steve’s golden face was too much to behold. Her head spins, her heart races. The baby turns and kicks, apparently as agitated as Peggy feels. 

“You’re not—”

She opens her eyes, meets Steve’s concerned stare head on. “Captain Rogers, if I say I am fine, then you’d better believe I am fine. I am certainly capable of walking down the hall to say goodnight to our son.”

Steve doesn’t look convinced but he offers her his hand, helps Peggy take to her feet. It’s slow going but Peggy manages it, proud once she’s upright and moving. The baby kicks again, harder than before, hard enough to pause Peggy mid-stride. “It’s just the baby moving,” she tells Steve to assuage the fresh wave of worry flooding his features, his arm wrapping around her waist as she regains her breath. “Here.” She holds his hand against her side, keeps herself from flinching when the baby kicks again.

This baby’s moved less than James did while Peggy carried him, but all the tests have come back normal and the doctors assure them that there’s nothing to worry about. It’s only recently that they’ve begun moving more often, sudden jabs and swift kicks that throb dully even after the movements passed.

Steve’s mouth is colored with astonishment at the feeling of the baby moving, eyes rounding. “Kid packs a wallop, Peg. Are you—”

Peggy rolls her eyes, feeling considerably more awake now. She’s still tired but that’s become a new state of being for her, one Peggy knows she can survive. She resumes walking with her awkward lumbering gait. “If you finish that question Steve you’ll be sleeping with James tonight.” 

-

The first time James got sick Steve nearly lost his mind. It had been too easy to imagine the worse, to think of all the things that might go wrong, that doctors wouldn’t be able to help, to picture a small headstone like the countless Steve walked by whenever he took Ma and Dad flowers.

He’d spent the night sitting up next to James’ crib, waiting for each ragged wheeze of an inhale, stroking his fingers over James’ fevered brow to gauge his temperature. Peggy had slept uneasily in the rocking chair, waking in starts to ask if James was alright and Steve always rushed to assure her he was, though his heart always thrummed nervously against his ribs, didn’t settle again until James’ fever broke and he was back to his normal self, happily gumming on anything he would get into his mouth.

Lying next to Peggy now he feels a little like he did then, nervous and unsure, powerless to help her.

Peggy’s never been one to complain, but Steve worries about what she’s not saying now. He’s been watching her all this time, watched her getting more and more tired, like every day was taking something from her.

She fell asleep nearly as soon as she came back to bed, still insisting she was fine, but no matter how desperately Steve wants to believe her, he can’t in good faith, not with the light still on behind her, deepening the shadows on her face as he looks at her.

The curve of her stomach radiates warmth against his arm, and Steve nudges closer so that the back of his hand presses just over the raised hill of Peggy’s navel through her night shirt. Peggy draws another deep breath, curls a little further into herself. Steve remembers how restless she always was when she was pregnant with James, how she’d shift throughout the night, wake and rearrange pillows, blankets, and Steve himself in an effort to get comfortable. Peggy doesn’t do that now, though her discomfort is evident, sleeps heavy and deep, though more and more often now she doesn’t seem any better rested for it.

The doctor keeps telling them that everything is normal, better than they expected for a woman Peggy’s age whose only on her second child. 

Not for the first time Steve wonders if they shouldn’t have taken Howard up on his offer to visit the physicians employed by SHIELD, people more prone to think outside the box of traditional medicine. Maybe they could find some way of helping Peggy, if it is help she needs.

Peggy’s breathing spikes sharply at almost the same time Steve feels the sharp jab of a foot or elbow against the back of his hand.

Steve hardly ever felt James move, his movement concentrated on Peggy’s bladder according to her, and he still wonders if it’s always like this. He hopes it wasn’t.

Steve hasn’t felt as though his body’s his own for a long time. Even before Doctor Erkstein decided he was the right man for his experiment, Steve felt as though his body was something he was subject to rather than a part of himself, weak as it was, never quite what he wanted it to be or able to do what he needed it to do for him.

After the serum his body was property of the SSR, the U.S. government, and somehow, in a twisted way Steve doesn’t care to think about too much nowadays, maybe even Hydra for forcing the world’s hand to create someone like Captain America. 

Now, out here, working for SHIELD, he’s still trying to get a feel of himself, figure out how he can operate without someone holding his leash, like he might actually have a say in where his life goes. Howard used to joke that Steve’s decision to procreate was a matter of national security but it only took one hard look from Steve and a lecture from Peggy to cure him of that line of thinking.

(Steve worried, still worries, about what the world will think of his son. James has been nothing less than a marvel to Steve from the moment the nurses carried him away, wailing and red, perfect in every way even if he didn’t inherit anything from Steve except for his hair.)

The feeling only worsens the guilt churning inside him now, lying next to Peggy feeling as though he’s responsible for taking some of that freedom away from her. 

“Steve—” Peggy’s hands close around his arm, and Steve finds himself eye to eye with her. There’s something wrong, he can feel it, see it, her face pale, her lips pressed white for a second before she sucks in a dragging breath. “Steve, I think—I might need that doctor, after all.”

She tries to smile but her mouth only twitches weakly before she sucks in another breath.

Steve doesn’t say a word. He leaps into action. Peggy is heavier than usual but she might as well be weightless in Steve’s arms when he picks her up off the bed, Steve’s arms braced behind her back and knees, Peggy cradled in his arms.

“You’re okay,” Steve says, moving them down the hall on silent feet, mindful not to wake James, “You’re both going to be okay.” His voice is steady but his heart thunders inside his ears.

-

“False alarm.” The doctor on duty announces, bleary-eyed, sounding almost bored as he assures them Peggy’s good to return home. She feels an odd flush of shame for causing so much fuss over nothing, but she woke so suddenly tonight, the pain in her pelvis squeezing like a vice. Peggy isn’t afraid of pain but tonight she was afraid, panic wrapping around her chest and pulling in tight until she couldn’t stop herself from telling Steve.

Steve still looks unsure, hair a mess from his time spent in the waiting room, looking foolish with his jacket pulled on over his sleep clothes, barefooted because he hadn’t thought to stop to grab shoes for either of them. Peggy was half-convinced Steve was going to literally race them to hospital before he stopped to grab the car keys.

“It happens, dears.” Says the nurse who helps Peggy into a wheelchair for the short trip downstairs to the car park. “Why, I must have thought my third was on his way four or five times before it was actually time.” She smiles kindly at Steve, “Though part of it might have been wishful thinking.”

Steve smiles back, thin but honest.

The drive back home is silent, Steve trying and failing to start numerous conversations that never quite take shape. Peggy stares out the window, tired, fear still prickling along the soles of her feet, one hand resting on the great girth of her belly.

“I’m sorry if I frightened you.” Peggy says softly, hoping to alleviate some of her guilt.

“Peg.” Steve sighs, and his large warm hand closes around her free hand, resting on the seat between them, his grip steadfast and sure. She tears her eyes from the window and finds Steve still looking at the road, “I—I’m just glad you’re okay.” He says and Peggy doesn’t know what to say in response, inches closer to him instead, rests her head against his shoulder while he takes them home.

Anna and Edwin are still awake when they arrive, sitting at the kitchen table with cups of tea. Anna’s eyes drop to Peggy’s still mammoth belly and Peggy shakes her head. “Not today.” Peggy says lightly, touching her hand to her stomach. The baby’s gone still again and Peggy is grateful for the reprieve.

“Sorry for causing so much upset—” Peggy starts, and Edwin shakes his head, rising up out of his seat and pulling another chair out at the table. “Don’t be ridiculous. It was nothing.”

“It was a good thing we were here.” Anna Jarvis says, her voice soft and reassuring, “James woke not long after you’d left. I put him back to bed—he wasn’t too upset.”

Steve sighs, “I’ll go check on him.”

Peggy puts a hand on his arm, squeezes it gently. “I’ll go. If you’ll excuse me,” she says to Anna and Edwin before she goes, “I’m afraid all this excitement has taken it out of me.”

She half-expects Steve to follow her out of the kitchen, offer to carry her up the stairs but he stays put, though Peggy feels his eyes on her as she goes. Upstairs the air is cooler, lighter, devoid of the tension that suffuses the atmosphere in the kitchen.

James is sleeping when she creeps into his room. Anna left his bedside lamp on when she put him back to bed so Peggy turns it off before she takes a seat on the edge of his bed. The early morning light is just starting to go the color of grey quartz outside the window, but Peggy thinks she could describe every inch of this room perfectly from memory. James’ neat collection of picture books, his toys tidily put away and awaiting the day’s play, the pictures that adorn his walls and the star covered rug covering the floorboards at the center of the room. The perfect stitches holding each square of the quilt covering his bed—a gift from Anna for his birthday. Lord knows Peggy’s only ability with a needle is where stitches are involved.

James makes a soft sound in the dark and Peggy looks for the outline of his dark head in the inky morning light. “I’m sorry darling, go back to sleep.”

“I dreamt you’d taken the baby on an adventure but hadn’t taken me with you.” James replies tearfully, wiggling closer and rumpling the blanket around him. His hair is sweat-damp when Peggy strokes it, his skin flushed warm with sleep, and Peggy repositions herself as gracefully as she can until he can rest his head on her lap.

“ _The song the robin sings, through years of endless springs…_ ” Peggy sings just as Steve does when he sits at James’ bedside, scratching her fingers through his untidy hair.

James sniffs but doesn’t start crying, lets Peggy sing poorly and rub his back and pet his hair until he’s gone back to sleep.

(She’d been so afraid, when she woke, the pain in her body so real Peggy thought she’d forget to breathe. She’s been shot before, given birth before, but both experiences paled in comparison to the pain that seized her body and tore her from sleep. And she’d thought, she’d known, something was wrong. It had to be, to feel so terrible, and she’d been afraid.)

“I’m right here, sweetheart.” She says again and again, even after he’s drifted off. “I’m right here.” She means to keep her word. 

God, even if that means taking Howard up on his offer.

-

James, as always, is delighted when Howard Stark himself appears to welcome them at SHIELD HQ. His hand slips free from Steve’s and he bounds forward the last few steps straight into Howard’s open arms. “You’d think it’s been a century since he last saw him.” Peggy says drily, but she’s smiling too, watching as Howard hoists James upward before declaring, “You been packing on the pounds, Jim?”

They don’t normally bring James to work but he’s been a perpetual shadow since the morning he woke up to find Anna and Edwin at home in place of his parents. Steve didn’t have it in him to insist he’d stay at home with a sitter when James said he really did want to tag along. His book bag, packed with dime books and a few select toys is slung over Steve’s shoulder, forgotten now that Howard is present to entertain James with a quick-paced story of a lab experiment gone wrong. For a man who consistently declares himself a professional bachelor, Howard seems to enjoy the time he spends with James, spoiling him whenever and however he thinks Peggy and Steve won’t notice.

“How you doing there, Agent Carter?” Howard asks, James propped on his hip. Peggy smiles, accepts Steve’s arm when he offers it. He holds her hand where it rests against the crook of his arm. He makes sure to keep his gait slow and measured, matches his stride to hers. She refuses the wheelchair one of the nurses offers her, determined not to scare James. Not that James is paying either of them any attention at the moment.

“Let’s you and I switch, Captain.” Howard says once they're within the facility proper. He sets James down on his own two feet again and Peggy lets Steve go, gives him a reassuring smile as she steps towards Howard. “Keep that look off your face Rogers, we’re just running some basic blood tests, nothing you’ve got to worry about.” Howard says, hands in his pockets, shooting James a big wide grin, “Think you can keep the big guy from fretting too much?”

James nods, “Yeah.”

“Knew you had it in you, kid.”

Steve steals a quick kiss before Howard leads Peggy away, “We’ll be right here.” He says, trying to inject every scrap of reassurance he can into his voice, wants Peggy to understand that he’d be in there with her, be the one being stuck full of needles and strapped to wires, if he could.

“Of course you will.” Peggy answers, touching Steve’s face briefly. She combs James’ hair off his forehead before she goes, leaving Steve and James together, alone.

They wander the grounds while they wait, the lush green grounds Howard had funded when he and the rest of the SHIELD’s board of directors built this facility. James stops them to read the miniscule signs buried in each individual flowerbed, asks Steve to help him make sense of the worlds he doesn’t know yet (which is most of them) and they struggle with the Latin names together.

Afterward they find their way to the workers’ cafeteria, sit together at one of the small square tables. James eats a ham and cheese sandwich cut into triangles while Steve sips at a cup of black coffee, then they remain where they are with James flipping the pages of one of his comics, something about a world-threatening robot defeated by a caped crusader in blue and red. James doesn’t do away with Steve’s nervousness but it helps him a little, to listen to James as he explains each page. He wants to reignite the wildfire of excitement he felt when Peggy first told him she was expecting, before the dread of what-might-be settled into his bones.

He loves James, loves the baby Peggy carries now, but he loves his wife, wishes there were a way to have them without causing her harm. If he had to choose—it was easier deciding to fly a plane into the ocean.

“I thought I might find you here.” Peggy says, stepping into the cafeteria, replacing her sweater as she approaches. Steve catches sight of the cotton ball affixed to the crook of Peggy’s arm before it disappears into her sleeve.

“Mummy!” James cries out before catching himself, blushing as he sinks back in his chair. Peggy looks as wane as she did when they arrived here, but her smile is still lovely when she shares it. “Hello my darling.” She says when she gets to their table and Steve rushes to his feet to pull out her chair. Peggy kisses his cheek in thanks and even if she still looks sickly, there’s something gentler to her face.

Howard finds them there, declares that Peggy’s tests are all normal. “We’re still waiting on a few but my people seem hopeful. Nothing to worry about, agents. I’ll come by later with the rest of your results, save you the drive. Sound alright?” Howard smiles, but it’s too broad, too close to the big flashy one he puts on when he’s trying to make a sale pitch.

Steve keeps his shoulders loose, his smile easy, “Of course. If it’s not too much trouble, Howard.”

-

Howard keeps his word when he comes that night, handing Peggy a folder full of files. “This is all of them?” She asks, her earlier relief somewhat shriveled now, though it’s still a reprieve to finally have an answer.

“Each and every one of them. Made sure to destroy all the originals too.” Howard says, rocking back on his heels. “You gonna tell him?” He asks quietly.

Peggy looks down at the files in her hands. She made a promise to Steve long before they married. She won’t betray his trust now. Especially not about this.

Not about their family.

She waits until after dinner, until James is asleep and they’re safe in their bedroom. She contemplates leaving her clothes on but the waistband of her skirt is bothering her fiercely, so she’s slipped into her nightgown by the time Steve comes to bed.

“Howard gave me something when he came to dinner.” Peggy says, picking the file folder up off her bedside table. She doesn’t know where to look while he reads the reports within it, glances about the room and then finally back at his face, his strong jaw and the slope of his nose, the line of his brow. She watches the surprised flutter of his pale lashes, the way his eyes widen as he goes from one page to another. “Peg…” He sounds mystified.

Peggy reaches for him, wraps him in her arms as best she can with her belly between them. She kisses his temple, the corner of his eye where a tear has sprung loose. The salt of it lingers on her lips.

“Peg is this—”

Peggy nods. She’s frightened but that fear is nothing compared to the respite of knowing she isn’t going mad after all.

(“Are you sure?” Peggy asks, staring down at her belly. “Howard, no offense but you’re an engineer not a medical doctor—” Howard taps the report on his desk, “Maybe not, but you know as well as I do that the government’s had me working on recreating Erkstein’s serum since the war. And I know it well enough to recognize it when I see it. And you’ve got it, Peggy. You’ve got it right there.” Peggy’s hands cover her stomach, almost as though that’ll ward off Howard’s words.)

“Howard wasn’t lying. All the tests read normal, for both of us. With this one exception, that is.” Peggy rests her head against his. A shiver seems to run from Peggy’s limbs into Steve’s and she holds him tighter, closer, wants to give him what comfort she can. She didn’t always know how to do this, used to fear those long years of war and hardship had calcified anything resembling softness inside her.

But Peggy’s never been one to be deterred by what she doesn’t know, and she’s learned this well enough in the interim. It’s taken patience, with herself and with Steve, taken time and trial and error, but Peggy is here now, capable of this now, and there’s no shame to it, just another skill she’s had to pick up that life has deemed necessary.

“Peggy—if the baby’s like me, if they find out—” Steve’s voice has never sounded smaller and Peggy sits back, cups his face in her hands. She turns his eyes towards her and away from the reports.

“No one is going to find out.” She tells him, somewhat surprised by the fierceness in her own voice. “Howard’s seen to that.” He said it was the least he could do. (“Far as I’m concerned, your husband might have signed on to work for Uncle Sam, but that’s where it ends. No need for anyone you don’t invite to take any part in its upbringing.”)

Steve says her name again, still in a daze and Peggy bumps her head against his, drops one of her hands to take his and bring it to rest against the side of her belly. “It’s a girl.” She says, feeling a thin tendril of excitement, almost foreign in the mess of everything else she’s learned today. “Howard found that out too.”

That seems to break Steve out of his fog, his eyes dropping to her stomach before rising rapidly to her face. “A girl?”

Peggy nods, watches the incredulous flicker of Steve’s mouth, the affection and disbelief in his eyes. “I know we were considering the name Michael...” She trails off, trying to quell the tremor in her voice with a smile. Because there is still so much to figure out, but right now she wants only to be happy, to bask in Steve’s happiness, like any other parents in the world.

“Everything is going to be alright.” Steve says, voice low. A lifelong vow. “I promise you.” He takes a long breath.

Peggy chuckles weakly under her breath. Her noble hero, still so inclined to play the part of knight in shining armor. She runs her fingers through his hair. But Steve’s always been able to recognize that Peggy doesn’t need saving.

“That’s not the kind of promise anyone can keep, not even you Captain.” She says gently, touching her palm to the side of Steve’s face. He looks like he wants to argue, fear still clear in his eyes like a pilot light in the dark.

“Peg—”

“You’re here with me Steve. That’s enough. Just—” Peggy swallows, emotion knotting thick in her throat, so tightly it aches. She closes her eyes, feels Steve’s hand at her waist, holding her steady. “Stay. Right here with me. With _us_.”

Steve’s arms wrap around her, hold her as close as he can with the baby between them. He laughs, watery and weak, his smooth cheek pressed to hers. “Where else would I be, Peg?”

Peggy shakes her head, face folding against her will, eyes so hot she has to squeeze them tighter, though that doesn’t prevent a few stray tears from breaking loose. She can’t say why she’s crying. She feels as though she was forever crying when she was expecting James, but it hasn’t happened nearly as often this time around, maybe because all her energy has been channeled into the worry she’s been carrying with her for months.

“I don’t know—” Peggy hiccups, frustrated with herself for the sheer volume of sentiment leaking from her mouth. She still thinks about it sometimes, though she hates it, still thinks about how easily he could have flown that plane into the ocean and been lost to her. She doesn’t say any of that of course, she never does, but it’s still there, a shadow darkening their door.

A lost for the world, for sure, but she knows the lost would be greatest for her, to lose him and everything they’ve gained together since that time.

“Steve.” She croaks, taking a deep ragged breath she’s ashamed of, “Steve, I can’t do this without you.”

Steve’s own face is pink when she looks at him, tear-streaked and flushed with emotion. “You can do anything Peggy,” he says with so much conviction she can’t find the voice to disagree. “You think Howard could have gotten half of SHIELD put together without your help? This kid, our kids are lucky to have you as their mother—” Peggy clenches her hands tighter around him. Because it’s Steve who stays away through the night when James is sick and Steve who picks him up and carries James on his shoulders and Steve who sings when James is scared and Peggy knows, even if she’d done this all with someone else, it would never have been _this_.

“I’m just glad I get to be with you while you do it.” Steve says and Peggy nods, hopes he understands how deeply she agrees.

-

“She’s going to be breaking hearts one day,” the nurse says kindly, coming to a standstill at Steve’s side outside the large window overlooking the newborns’ ward. Steve smiles, wants to say she’s breaking his heart already, bald and wrinkled as she is, the fine thin fuzz covering her head hidden beneath the yellow hat knit for her by Anna Jarvis. She’s smaller than James was when he was born, looks frail, too frail to house the steady heartbeat that Steve felt thrumming up under her thin skin when he held her earlier.

It feels like it was yesterday that Peggy told him what Howard had found out about their daughter, but none of it seems to matter now that she’s here.

She’s so small. Steve can’t believe his own eyes, though he’s staring at her clear as day, his daughter.

“She’s ugly.” James says in that matter-of-fact way he has of stating the obvious, and Steve laughs, holds him tighter, pressing a kiss to James’ head.

“You weren’t much of a looker yourself when you were born.” Steve answers, still laughing. He thought James was beautiful from the moment the doctors let Steve see him and his daughter is no different. They’ll have to think of a name for her soon, the first of a hundred things they’ll have to figure out. Steve wonders who she’ll be, what she’ll be able to do. Dr. Erskine said that the serum only enhanced what was already there, but with her, so new, a thousand possibilities encased in a single small body, he can’t imagine what that might look like.

But Steve meant what he told Peggy that night, he’s happy be there for his daughter while she figures out who and what she wants to be.

James is looking at his sister with such frank curiosity it makes his heart feel like its grown, almost like it did when he first stepped out of the chamber in the SSR’s lab.

“Can I see Mummy now?” James asks, and Steve nods, sends her one more long look before stepping away from the window.

“Ready to take that trip to the Artic?” Steve asks as they make their way down the corridor.

James laughs, “Not now Dad, the baby’s too.”

Steve sets James down outside Peggy’s room, takes his small hand in his before reaching for the door knob. “She’s stronger than she looks.” Steve says, opening the door, “She takes after your mom that way.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) by e.e. cummings
> 
> The song Peggy starts singing is Stella by Starlight originally by Victor Young, but I like the Frank Sinatra version.


End file.
